“Fuck him,” Danny said. Everything is going out, the tide can take us all to the East. He just needed his place. His face went hot and felt full of pins and needles and his lips shook. Danny clapped his hands over his mouth. He could taste the salt on them. He pressed his mouth shut, his lips still. Holding his own face so tightly meant the air whistled fast in and out of his nose. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. The periphery was beginning to grow darker, and Danny was sinking into his body. If I pass out now it will all be ruined. Slick with sweat, his hands slid into a cup over his mouth and nose. Slowing his breath helped bring the color back into the sky, the blue into the black. This was the place.
Danny started to untie the twine around the package in his lap. He picked at the knots with his fingernails. Danny wanted the quiet sea to enfold him too, swaddled in waves and seaweed. He didn’t want to make a sound. He wanted it to be silent; the world would go to sleep with him. But sound travels over water. The knot came undone, and he turned the package over, letting the twine unwind. It was close to high tide, but he wasn’t sure if it was going in or going out. Libby and Tom seemed to have an innate ability to know the tide’s direction, like an Australian aborigine who can be taken blindfolded into the windowless basement of an office building and still tell you which direction is north. I have no internal compass now. Bob and Scarlet had been those forces, north and south, high and low; they were tides and oceans and stones and love. And he was just there, the water boy, the alternate. They were the answer to some bizarre family equation, and he was just the remainder. Even Tom and Gwen and Libby were integers, factors, participants.
And yet he felt like maybe he loved his parents more than his siblings did. They didn’t seem to miss them. They seemed to just go on, and that made him hate them a little, and need them even more. How do you go on? He didn’t want to think about Scarlet, or his dad, or his siblings. He wanted to stop thinking completely. He was drifting closer to the bridge, and he knew he had to do it before he got there. He needed a moment of privacy; he didn’t want some summer kid in his father’s speedboat to see him drop, see some red flash bright against the green trees. He wanted it nice and simple. Danny unfolded the paper from the tight bundle in his lap, each layer pulled back like gray petals around a great black seed.
He looked up at the sky; there were no clouds, and he wondered if God wanted a clear view. Then the dinghy, having turned slowly horizontal to the oncoming waves, rocked violently with the frothy wake of a speeding yacht, not a real one with a sail, but a double wide outfitted with a motor. Danny clutched at the sides of his dinghy; the package sprang from his lap and fell hard to the bottom of the boat; his hands sprang up, shielding his face.
“Having some trouble there?” Danny turned to see Remy in his boat pulling up the only lobster pot in the cove all of twenty feet away. “It helps if you use the oars.”
Danny’s hands were shaking. His spinal cord pulsed with heat. How long has he been there? Danny pushed the package back under his seat. Did he see?
“I was just enjoying the view. But thanks for the tip.” Danny began fumbling with the oarlocks, half on purpose, wanting Remy to leave before he had to try to row.
“You wanna tow? I’m going your way.”
“That’s okay, I got the wind on my side.” Please leave. Please leave.
“But you ain’t got the tide.”
“Really, I’m fine. Just hanging out.” Locks of Danny’s hair were pasted to his sweaty face. He tried not to make eye contact. He didn’t want to look a guy like Remy in the eye right then. Remy probably had never cried.
“I suppose when you live in the city you get that peaked look. All that soot.” Danny imagined that the last city Remy set foot in resembled Worcester during the industrial revolution, offal in the gutters, powdered manure in the air, palm oil in every man’s hair. Maybe Remy was an immortal living in this place separate from time so no one suspected. Remy Everlasting. He didn’t need to cry. He’d seen it all. Danny looked up at him, the heat in his spine receding and a powerful nausea taking its place.
“My mom really liked you,” said Danny, his voice shaking.
Remy nodded. “She was a good one, that’s for sure.” Putting slowly, he pulled his boat alongside the dinghy.
“Here.” Remy tossed a coil of towline, which unraveled in the air soft as a ribbon, but clattered into the bottom of the boat with a small splash. Danny tied the line to the cleat on the bow. His hands were still shaking as he looped the rope under itself and over again. The rocks in his pockets knocked together. He hoped Remy didn’t notice.
“You set?” Remy looked over his shoulder from the wheel.
Danny nodded.
“You forgot your life jacket.”
Danny shrugged.
“Me too.” Remy gave him a wink and eased on the throttle. The dinghy’s bow tilted up as they pulled faster out of the cove. The water in the hull sloshed toward the stern, but the package stayed at his feet. Danny breathed hard, felt his lunch come up fast, and he leaned over the side, letting his hot insides pour into the cold sea. He was glad Remy didn’t turn around. He thought of Gwen throwing up in the ladies’ room of the ferry depot on their way over. He thought of Libby in Scarlet’s hat. He thought of Tom pushing him up the gangway in front of him, of throwing an arm across Gwen when they pulled over to the side of the road, of folding a sweater Melissa left in a ball. He rinsed his mouth with a handful of seawater. Now his escape pod had been jettisoned without him. Maybe there was no easy way out. He replaced the oarlocks and felt his stomach drop with each wave. How do you keep going?
Ten feet from their dock, Remy stalled in neutral, and Danny untied and threw back the line.
“Thanks for the tow.”
“Yup.” And off Remy went, without a look back, just a hand held high over his head.
Libby came down the gangway as Danny started to pull the boat out on the outhaul. Why is everyone everywhere today?
“Everything okay?” She nodded at Remy disappearing toward town.
“Oh, yeah. I ran into him and he offered me a tow.” Because I’m pathetic.
“You feeling okay? You’re sort of gray.” She put her hand on his forehead. Danny rolled his eyes. He couldn’t let her look too closely.
“I’m probably anemic. I’ll go eat some raw beef right now!” He bounded up the gangway, a plastic bag heavy in his hand.
“Don’t blame me if it turns out you have SARS or Lyme disease or mono,” she shouted after him. Danny stopped on the porch and looked back. Libby was pulling the dinghy in, looking it over carefully.
TWENTY-ONE
ANOTHER SUMMER
Their mother is here alone, came up a few days ahead to open the house. Her husband will come tomorrow with Tom, Gwen, and Danny. But Libby comes home today; she is not so little now, twenty-five this year. She thought it would be just them for the night, her Libby, all to herself. But coming back toward the house in the small boat, there are three. Libby has brought a friend. Riley. Arriving on the late boat. The sun sinks enough to make them think of strong drinks in low glasses, cheese, legumes crystalled with salt.